Steam-Wagon Steering Query (Ackermann)

Well, it is interesting but doesn't help my original query because I am constrained by what someone in a drawing-office in the village of Bourton decided 112 years ago; but that feature of Sentinel steam-lorries is used as an example in one of my reference books.

The steering-gear on my model at present is a worm and wheel but is temporary, as it a bit small and weak for the application. I don't know what the originals used because the works are encased, but the shape of the gear-box and what suggests a shaft end on its face, would be appropriate for either worm and quadrant (not full wheel) or screw and nut.

The lack of drawings enforced a lot of lateral research for this project, and this revealed some manufacturers used Ackermann steering fitted screw-and-nut gear, others used a worm and quadrant, some fitted a full worm-wheel that can be rotated to a new quadrant when it wears.

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My first car was a Sharps Commercials 'Bond Minicar', whose single front wheel suspension - plus engine - was on a near-vertical column rotated by worm and quadrant as on some early road-rollers.

I have started calling it "Darwin" steering, on the basis that it wasn't invented by Ackerman.

I knew the chap who holds the Lands End to John o Groats record for one of those. He reckoned he stopped in Preston for a few hours kip, during which time they changed the engine, as driving it flat out continuously hadn't done it any good.

I reckon he deserved the kip - driving a Bond Minicar for some 300-400 miles and that only as far as Preston (well under half-way), probably hadn't done him any good either!

One peculiarity of the steering was that the wheel was in a vertical plane, not tilted back slightly, and at a shallow angle in azimuth with the car's axis. So having a right arm slightly longer than the left would have been an advantage.

A more subtle peculiarity was that even if the driving unit column was inclined to give some trail, as a "castor" it was all the wrong way round, with the swing-arm holding the machinery and wheel projecting ahead of the column

The engine he'd worn out would have been either of 200cc or the heady later-optional 250cc. It was a Villiers 2-stroke, air-cooled motorcycle engine with the flywheel replaced by the very heavy, overhung 'Siba Dynastart' rotor; and the column-gear change lever linked to the original cycle gearbox pedal. An extra ignition switch position gave the reverse "gear" by starting the engine backwards. I forget if it used a single contact-breaker set to TDC or a pair of contacts slightly in advance for each direction.

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Going back to the Hindley "Light Delivery Van", the rather unscientific design of its Ackermann Steering probably did not matter much at all. Hindley's advertising and contemporary Commercial Motor magazine reviews do not mention speed, but it was unlikely to have been more than a few miles per hour.

Probably just as well, on all-steel wheels with completely smooth rims. It must have been a nightmare for the driver to handle on slippery setts on the sort of gradients its boiler was designed to work on, whilst also trying to cope with rain or snow on a cab-less vehicle in Winter. .

However, Hindleys offered wooden artillery-pattern wheels as an option, and were even granted a patent for a steam-wagon wheel given some vibration-absorbing by a thick wooden inner rim between the discs and tyre. I have modelled the latter, scaled from the Patent Application, although no surviving photographs show them fitted; and am contemplating giving the rims solid rubber tyres.

A Bond Minicar? Eeeh, luxury!

Any helpful info in this thread on a Super Sentinel ?

**LINK**

Had to follow that clue up, and yes, Rudolf Ackermann was Georg Lankensperger's UK patent holder, whilst Erasmus Darwin had the same idea earlier but was too posh to patent it. Erasmus Darwin belonged to the Lunar Club with James Watt and other leading Industrial Revolutionaries.

Andy's lead turned into another humiliation. Until today I thought I understood Ackermann Steering. Now I find there's Full Ackermann, True Ackermann, Dynamic Ackermann, Adjustable Ackermann, Anti-Ackermann and Pro-Ackermann. The one I thought to be the one and only Ackermann is Pro-Ackermann, and my understanding of that is a simplification.

However, I don't think Nigel's wagon needs a well thought out steering geometry unless the turning circle is very tight. I suspect the same was true of the original because a fair bit of inner wheel slip can be tolerated at slow speeds. An Ackermann-like approximation would do. Just a semi-educated guess though - don't bet the farm on it!

Dave

One of the reference-books I am using as a guide does use the Sentinel system as an example.

Given that E.S Hindley & Sons were a successful company making a wide range of machines including stationary steam engines and gas-engines, it tempting to wonder what they may have gone onto develop had they not collapsed in the depression following WW1. (Before the "Great Depression" , as I understand it.)

It is thought Savages, of Kings Lynn, bought the designs etc. but whether they used them is another matter.

C.W Harris, a contemporary engineering company and motor-car builder based in Chewton Mendip (Somerset), bought a Hindley wagon for its own use; and appear to have copied it under the "Mendip" brand used for the cars, but whether a shameless rip-office or legitimately, and how successfully, I do not know.

Maybe it should be Jeantaud Steering

Turn, turn, turn: The great fib about who really invented Ackermann steering | Hemmings

I think my vehicle's is Sumwearnady Steering.....

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So, yes, Darwin followed perhaps by Jeantaud.

Interesting that he this was Charles Darwin's grandfather and had pointed to what C. subsequently studied for his work on the theory of natural section, in which Wallace was also a pioneer.

Engineering is full of hand-me-down misconceptions, even myths, crediting (or blaming) the wrong people unfairly; yet the use of Ackermann to describe the steering was already common by the early 20C. Hindley used it in their own advertising in 1908.

Two modern reprints of handbooks originally published in that era, do not give any inventor's name at all; as if the geometry just sort of appeared.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 30/06/2023 15:45:18

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 30/06/2023 15:57:49

Hi Nigel have a look in my album called nigel for some steering drawings, i think it might help, its a four inch wagon.keep up the good work on your wagon!

kind regards

vic

Thank you Vic.

Have just done so.

I've not seen that intermediate gear on other steering-boxes, and it seems only to set the drop-link turning the correct way. If so, I'm surprised the designer did not either put the worm on the "front" of the wheel, or use a left-hand worm and wheel.

I'm delighted to hear of a Hindley product being modelled. I live close to the old factory site, if you can call it that.

Hello Andy Pugh

I'm sure you will be relieved to know that Ackerman did not invent the steering named after him. It was a German who worked it out. in about 1820 (?) - and he had a Mr Ackerman as his agent for the UK. Ackerman's main business was prints of carriages, coaches, etc, and he illustrated one or two designs with the system instead of the axle turned directly by the horses slewing sideways. And to protect his interest in the design, he patented it.

There are many other products, processes, phenomena, etc which carry a name of someone else. Silly old world.

Cheers, Tim

Jon -

Aha!

I have visited the site while it was still there, though derelict, and somewhere have photos of my part-built model posing in front of her ancestral home. The buildings are recognisable from the Hindley advertisements photographs, though someone had only gone and put a gravel bund and Arris fencing in the way, so I could not quite set the pictures rightly.

There was a gap though, and I am not too stout, so did a little discreet exploring which yielded some of the milk-products company's (the last site user) literature, containing some good historical details and photographs.

There is the modern, Richard Vincent-built replica, but none of Hindley's original steam-wagons are known to exist - there might be a 'Colonial' rusting away in some former colony I suppose - but a selection of other products are about. These include a small inverted-vertical steam-engine in Sherborne (I think) Museum, another engine in the "Brewers' Quay" former brewery in Weymouth, and unexpectedly a couple of enclosed high-speed engines rescued from the derelict whaling-station on South Georgia. Those are or were at Breamore House, near Ringwood.

'Turbo' Vincent also restored the Hindley-built water-wheel at the water-supply museum in Oborne,which also holds a lovely Hindley mill-engine steamed on open-days from a vertical boiler. That was rescued from another pumping-station.

(Now go and tell me you know, 'cos you're one of the volunteers there...!

I've also a copy of an old engineering text-book containing a description with drawings and dimensions of a special engine Hindley built for a technical-college, as an instructional machine. It was twin-cylindered, could be run in compound or simple single-cylinder modes, and had special drain-cocks for both collecting condensate for measuring, and connecting indicators. I think it was fitted with a rope-brake dynamometer, too. There is enough information there to build a close model form of it.

Being local you may know that somewhere on the factory site was the original (Saxon?) Dorset / Wiltshire / Somerset Boundary marker-stone. I wonder if that still exists? It would be good if it has been rescued and if possible kept in its proper location.

Hi Nigel, I was wondering which version you are making of the Hindley Wagon? Is it the boiler which has the extra steam dome / loco type perhaps? Or a vertical type as per the original design?Would this be in copper or steel? That is one point about steam wagon manufacturers ; the array of wheel types they used, anything from wood spoke , artillery, disc, cast pattern/ forged/ steel bars... the few pics I have seen show 3 types so far! If you go for the steel front tyre and disc see my folder pic , then you should have no problem turning the wheel, as rubber bites in hard while the wagon is stationary . Of course when you are on the move then any stiffness is not noticeable!

Its a shame there is not more info on this fine wagon, the commercial motor archive has some info in a search there; apparently Pickfords used them! Keep up the good work on this under modelled wagon!

regards vic

The plain vertical boiler was used only on the short-lived prototype, under-type wagon, which was a rather spindly looking thing generally.

Their "Standard" (5 - 7 ton) wagon was an under-type with its engine mounted well aft. The 1908-introduced "Light Delivery Van" (LDV) I am trying to model, was mid-engined, with enclosed, inverted-vertical unit between the crew seats.

A heavier-duty version of the 7-ton Standard, the "Colonial", was made for export to the Empire. The catalogue photograph shows one in India, piled high with cotton bales, and, the caption proudly says, "driven by natives" . I can't imagine a modern HGV-manufacturer using that line these days...

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As far as I can tell all versions had the same basic boiler form. It was of locomotive type, with round-topped rectangular firebox on the bigger vehicles, flat-topped cylindrical firebox on the smaller sizes and I think the 'Colonial', like a T-piece on its side.

This was not a high steam-dome as such. In fact the steam volume is small for the boiler capacity. The patented pattern gives a high water-level above the short horizontal barrel, so that stays completely full of water. The aim was to allow the wagon to climb hills up to 1-in-8 while keeping the tubes and crown-plate submerged.

Firing was via a "stoking-shoot" [sic] opening through the boiler top, not a side-entry firedoor. It must have been hard to assess the state of the fire, and the stoking-shoot itself, a tube, used up potential steam-space.

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The whole thing is not the best of steam-wagon designs, especially as the infernal-combustion engine (and for local urban use, battery-electric lorries) were already becoming evident, and anyway other steam road vehicles were not only available but better thought-out.

They seemed not to use superheating despite having compound engines, but did not look after the vital vapour.

On the LDV, though only a short distance from boiler-top to engine inlet, the steam passed through a high loop of uninsulated, air-cooled iron pipe including the regulator. What struggled out of the LP exhaust must have been little better than wet fluff, and it's hard to see it induced much draught from a blast-pipe several feet away, for a boiler too short for good heat transfer. The high, parallel-walled chimney's natural draught may have been more useful. (The chimney is not very elegant, and looks like off-the-shelf stove-flue. Perhaps it was!)

The Standard would have been worse, for even if the pipes were lagged it was a long way from the regulator to the cylinders of an engine geared directly to the rear axle. Even further for the fluff to find its way to the chimney.

Whilst crew-comfort was largely ignored - a canopy seemingly optional. The controls apart from the steering-wheel were in odd positions for easy use, especially the regulator, which looks like a commercial, off-the-shelf, screw-down globe-valve, but might have been a plug-cock.

Even the steering-column could not spell "ergonomic". It appears slanted not only backwards towards the driver, but outwards, sideways, and the driver sat with both feet to the outside of the floor-mounted steering gearbox. The wheel did have a peg-handle for easier winding, though.

Changing gear on the Standard's two-speed transmission seemed to have entailed the driver, his shoulder already twisted by the bad footplate layout, dismounting and walking back to a lever just ahead of the rear wheel. I don't know how it was arranged on the LDV, whose reversing-lever looks as if cramped between the seat and engine so the driver can bash his knuckles on the hot HP valve-chest.

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Almost all of the contemporary advertisements show the standard, smooth steel-tyred wheels, though the catalogues offer other types to order, and show an example with Bauley wheels.

Plain or rubber, it is bad practice on any vehicle to try turning the front wheels when stationary anyway. Even where the Akermann-called, Darwin steering is much better than on the Bourton products.

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Brakes? They could not be cruder even for their time: a single, big cast-iron or rolled-steel shoe on each rear wheel, pulled against it (pushed backwards against it on some models: standardising wagons was not Hindley's forte); operated by a big traction-engine type handle.

Yet the factory was in a deep, steep-sided valley in hilly North Dorset, and customers included quarries on the Mendip Hills.

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The traction-engine style canopy seems an optional extra. The catalogue shows one of Pickfords' Standard wagons with a pram-hood style canopy screwed to the front of the box-body, vaguely protecting the crew from light rain blown gently from the rear.

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All in all, the Steam-Wagon appears a rather desperate and too-late venture somewhat out of E.S. Hindley & Sons' expertise. The firm made excellent stationary steam and gas engines, farm and building-site machinery, marine fittings, water-wheels etc., but I now wonder if its vehicles were part of its downfall even before it lost its valued-customer Pickfords to others.

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So why did I pick this thing, instead of building a Foden 'C'-type as originally envisaged?

I liked the look of it, in a history-magazine article; it intrigued me.

It was born in Bourton, Dorset; I am nearly a Dorset lad, excepting the first seven years from Hampshire manufacture.

Most model-engineers.and steam enthusiasts had never heard of the Hindley company and its products when I started far too many years ago - and the world and his wife has one of Edwin's vehicles....

Hi Nigel, that's a detailed answer! and good understanding of your Hindley project.I notice on the J Long panelled delivery van, the rear brakes could be two part, iron but a inside block of hardwood which bears against the actual rear rim.Perhaps this would give more friction than the metal block directly. I have seen a more modern solution of a motorcycle disc brake and caliper for braking ! But it does detract a little.The oil lamps are worth making, they look to be the round body type like Lucas king of the road, in another picture the flatter style of lamp , almost like on the back of the wagon. Did you make contact with the green painted ? hindley wagon builder? Think it was four inch scale?Keep the good work up! Kind regards vic

Thank you!

You could be right about the brake-blocks on that specimen, but Hindley's did not like to make their wagons too much like each other.

I am considering rubbering the steel tyres, in which case I'll need think of a different brake arrangement without affecting the appearance too much. It may be possible to put a ring inside the wheel for prototypical brake-blocks.

I was in contact with the other builder for a while, but it was some 15 years ago now! I saw his example at one of the fine club exhibitions Taunton Model Engineers used to run. I never met him, it was only by letter. I don't know but have a vague idea his wagon might have changed hands at some time since. It would have been around four-inch scale, yes.

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Make the oil lamps?

Hang on! I've yet to complete the steam-making bits then build the bulk of the steam-using bits and hope it all works, before I worry about the Optional Extras!

The Maloney-owned wagon in the photograph that set me on the quest, sports a hefty central headlamp on a crude bracket probably thrown together by the owner. I am not sure if it's oil or acetylene, but a working oil head-lamp might be just feasible in this scale. Interesting challenge I suppose. Its side-lamps are of rather stylish cylindrical shapes.

Not the side-lamps and gauge-glass lamp though. Probably too small. They'd need be electric.

I could make an acetylene lamp at that size, possibly, (remembering not to use copper in it) but I doubt the calcium-carbide is readily obtainable in small amounts these days, as it was when I started the whole project.

The originals would almost certainly have been bought-in, and quite likely but not necessarily Lucas. The rectangular bodied ones may, for example, have been in the Dependence range by J & R Oldfield, Ltd., of Birmingham.

I've put a photo of work so far, less superstructure, in the "Today" page of the "Tea-Room".